Why Nuclear Powers should start walking toward Global Zero

Russia’s nuclear arsenal re-affirms its great power status at home and abroad. Source: RIA Novosti / Vitaly Belousov

Nuclear weapons will not be effective in deterring or ending the types of conflicts that Russia is much more likely to have to face than a hypothetical war with NATO.

On April 5, 2009, President Barack Obama
gave a speech that was supposed to set the agenda for his presidency in
international security. “I state clearly and with conviction America's
commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,”
he proclaimed in front of an enthusiastic crowd in Prague.

Four years later, however, this drive to
achieve “Global Zero” seems to have waned to a point when even another round of
modest reductions in US and Russian arsenals appears difficult to achieve. Yet,
I would argue that the United States, Russia and the other nuclear powers each
have a stake in pushing forward toward world free from nuclear weapons.

Obama’s 2009 Global Zero rallying cry was
welcomed by official nuclear powers such as Great Britain and China. India came
out in support of eliminating nuclear weapons and influential policy leaders in
Pakistan also backed the goal of Global Zero. A number of the world’s leading
powers that do not have nuclear weapons but which could develop them with ease,
such as Japan or Germany, also back a Global Zero world.

Russia’s leaders also joined the welcoming
chorus. Both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev officially supported this
“fourth wave” of nuclear abolitionism. Medvedev and Obama signed the New START
treaty in April 2010, which both nations presented as evidence of their
commitment to pursue nuclear disarmament in compliance with the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

However discussions on further reductions
by the two countries, which together possess more than 90 percent of world’s
nuclear weapons, have stalled over US missile defence plans. And Russia’s
policy-makers in private are sceptical that their country will ever actually
agree to go all the way to Global Zero.

Asked when he thinks Russia might agree to
full nuclear disarmament, one senior Russian policy-maker is said to have
quipped: “Mañana!”

This less than optimistic prognosis is
rooted in the multitude of roles that Russia’s nuclear arsenal plays in the
Kremlin’s defence, security, foreign and even domestic policies. In addition to
deterring other nuclear powers and compensating for Russia’s inferiority to
NATO and China, in conventional forces, Russia’s nuclear arsenal also
re-affirms its great power status at home and abroad. It accommodates the
institutional interests of the nuclear weapons sector in the
military-industrial complex and the armed forces.

Given these multiple roles, one could say
that “mañana” is overly optimistic – Russia will agree to full nuclear
disarmament “bukra” (an Arabic word conveying a similar message as mañana but
with even less urgency).

However, I would argue that nuclear weapons
in fact play a narrower role than Russian strategists claim. For instance,
nuclear weapons will not be effective in deterring or ending the types of
conflicts that Russia is much more likely to have to face than a hypothetical
war with NATO. These include an armed conflict with a conventional power,
intrusion by insurgents, or low-intensity conflict with insurgents within
Russia.

Some of the perceived benefits of nuclear
weapons in a war are similarly problematic. A limited nuclear strike, which
Russia has repeatedly gamed out in the “West” exercises, would not necessarily
localise an armed conflict with NATO or de-escalate one were it ever to take
place. Moreover, striking a nuclear power or alliance may actually escalate the
conflict.

As for nuclear weapons’ role in preventing
conflict among nuclear weapons states, the absence of nuclear weapons would not
increase the probability of any such conflict occurring. The conditions for
full nuclear disarmament that the Russian and US leaders have presented since
April 2009 make it clear that neither will agree to a nuclear weapons free
world unless they have developed effective conventional deterrents and
established international arms control, security and verification systems.
These measures should not only help to prevent former nuclear powers from
attacking each other, but also to prevent potential threats from opportunistic
rogue states.

One disincentive for Moscow on the road to
Global Zero is that dramatic reductions in nuclear arsenals by United States
and Russia would undermine the existing model of deterrence based on the
concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD). We can hope, however, that calls
made by senior diplomats on both sides to explore ways of abandoning the Cold
War relic of MAD in favour of what they have described as mutually assured
stability will bring results that remove this disincentive.

Yet another disincentive is that nuclear
arms cannot be “un-invented” and nations may preserve the capacity to covertly
acquire nuclear weapons, undermining the Zero in Global Zero. But this effect
can also be minimized. One proposed solution would place a modest number of
nuclear arms under UN control to deter opportunistic nations. Another proposal
envisions robust and even intrusive inspections coupled. A combination of the
two could minimize the risks. Weighing the long-term benefits of eliminating
nuclear weapons against the long-term costs of keeping them reveals that the
costs keep growing as nuclear proliferation continues.

The United States, Russia and other
official nuclear powers cannot hope to hold on to their arsenals despite their
commitments under the NPT treaty to eliminate them, while also trying to
convince others to honour their commitments to refrain from acquiring nuclear
weapons. True, fulfilment of these commitments will not ‘awaken the conscience’
of those set on proliferation and ‘shame them into stopping.’ However, without
such efforts, it would be very difficult to win the international community’s
support in trying to stop these proliferators.

The spread of technologies will inevitably,
over time, allow ever more countries and, potentially, non-state actors to
develop nuclear weapons, spurring on countries that have the technological
capacity, but have so far abstained from developing these weapons, to follow
suit.

The emergence of new nuclear powers will
ultimately end the era of bilateral nuclear deterrence, and usher in an era of
complex and unpredictable multilateral deterrence configurations, increasing
the risk of a nuclear conflict, as Russian strategist Andrei Kokoshin rightly
notes.

And while new nuclear states might be
expected to act rationally or predictably and not to use such weapons against
Russia, the same cannot be said of non-state actors.

Nuclear weapons will not prevent a nuclear
attack by a group that is not clearly defined geographically or whose members
are willing to die for their cause.

A nuclear-free world will probably prove
unattainable even in the longer-term, due to the web of disincentives and the
various roles that nuclear weapons play. However, if the leaders of the United
States and Russia were to take further steps toward disarmament, and if other
nuclear powers were to join them further down the road, the world would become
significantly safer.